Objectives

1) To assess the knowledge regarding the risk factors of cervical cancer among medical undergraduate students.

2) To know their level of awareness regarding screening techniques and HPV vaccination.

Material & Methods: The present study was conducted in a tertiary care teaching hospital, Vizianagaram, Andhra Pradesh, India after obtaining approval from the Institutional Ethical Committee. 483 undergraduate medical students of MBBS were included in the study after taking verbal consent. A predesigned, self administered questionnaire was given to the students after explaining the purpose of study and completed forms were collected from them. Collected data was entered in MS Excel and analysed using SPSS version 21.

Results: Total 483 students were included in the study. The mean age of the participants was 21.47 + 0.6 years. The male students were 188(39%) and female students were 295(61%). Knowledge regarding preventable nature of cervical cancer is 97%. Awareness regarding the availability of vaccine against cervical cancer was 95.5%. Most of the students (90.7%) believed that multiple sexual partners is the major risk factor for cervical cancer. Very few students (20.9%) had knowledge regarding vaccination schedule. Majority of the students (65%) thought lack of knowledge was the most important obstacle for receiving HPV vaccination.

Conclusion: It is concluded from the above study that the level of knowledge regarding the risk factors of cervical cancer, routes of transmission, screening techniques and HPV vaccine is satisfactory among undergraduate students. However, there is an increasing trend in this level of knowledge between different semester students.

Keywords: Medical students, Cervical cancer, Screening, HPV vaccine.

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